Umoja

It’s a week and a half since we moved in to our new house in Kisumu. I have yet to complete a satisfactory night’s sleep.

Current impediments to a full nights’ rest include, but are not limited to the following:

Heat

Until very recently, my favoured method of getting settling in to sleep (at least, one I feel able to talk about in a forum consisting almost entirely of family and friends with the addition of a few waylaid google searchers) is to get a seasonally appropriate tog, super-king-size goose down duvet and to fashion it into a cocoon around me until all that can be seen of my being are a few tufts of hair and a mere suggestion of nose and mouth. Admittedly, this can cause problems when sharing a bed on a chilly Mancunian night, but one learns to live with the ensuing elbowing, tugging and jostling that accompanies getting settled for a good night’s hibernation in the North West.

Here in Kisumu, it’s frickin’ hot. Every night. Without fail. Covered with a thin cotton sheet ensconced in netting and overblown by an electric fan producing a force 9 gale, it’s STILL too hot to be comfortable. As yet, I can’t quite get used to sleeping alfresco and unencumbered by modesty preserving sheets. Not only is it a bit weird having a cool breeze across the body, but it’s just a few too many steps, well, giant leaps removed from my previous nesting instinct.

Until but 3 weeks ago, I could be found of a morning under a 4 foot deep pile of duvet. Now of a night I dream of sleeping buck naked on an iceberg in a wind tunnel.

Mosquitos

The sound of a buzzing mosquito I can deal with, just about. After previous toil in mosquito territory, sanity and decorum demand that one doesn’t freak out at he mere thought of being bitten by one. After all, it’s near certain that a bite will happen and that’s why all good travellers remember to take their chemoprophylaxis as and when they should.

So buzzing is fine. It’s the absence of a recently identified buzzing that causes terror. Whenever a buzzing sound stops abruptly, I feel the urge to start shaking each extremity in turn to establish clearly in my mind I am not some mozzie’s next meal. This is a very handy reflex when I’m busy, say, reading a book, or relaxing on the verandah over a sundowner. On the edge of sleep, it is somewhat of a pain in the arse.

Being the sensible wazungu that we are, Hannah and I sleep under a mosquito net. Providing that we have not followed the aforementioned sunset tipple with copious amounts of liquid refreshment at mealtime and seen the night off with a nightcap, we would normally remember to ensure the mosquito net is devoid of bitey things and tucked in properly before we turn out the light and settle down to sleep..

So, any buzzing and subsequent lack thereof after the lights are out, is almost certainly not going to cause us any grief. The assimilation of this new information to my body’s innate mosquito bite avoidance subroutine has not been achieved as yet, so I spend a good chunk of the night thrashing about like a hooked fish avoiding a date with a dinner plate.

Dogs

As a child back home in the Fens we kept outdoor dogs. No matter what the character of the dog, they barked at night. Sometimes they barked together, sometimes they barked at each other. On the odd occasion, they directed their barking at intruders, being after all, their raison d’etre. More often than not, the dogs barked at planes, lights, changes in air temperature, the wind, constructs of their wild canine imaginations or insects (difficult to explain to a dog that, though insects are, in essence, intruders, they are unlikely to make off with the family jewels unless the entire world’s ant population decide one day that they fancy pilfering the family TV).

And so to the dogs in our compound. They belong to the landlords with whom we share grounds. The dogs do not appear to have individual names, though I can’t be certain of this. Paul, the youngest member of the landlords’ household, tends to refer to one or other of them as something that sounds like “Neville”. Since this is then followed by lots of laughter on his part, it could just as likely be a joke about Manchester United’s right back as a slang word for dog that I’ll surely never be able to remember.

To keep with this theme and to allow me to distinguish between the two dogs, should I ever need, I’m going to call them Garry and Phil. Garry and Phil are well groomed, well fed, young, excitable and rather stupid German Shepherds (or possibly Alsatians, I can never remember the difference, if any, between the two breeds).

During the day, they have a shady kennel in which they rest. Here in Kisumu where it’s 30 degrees more often than not, daytime is best spent in the shade doing bugger all. In this respect, the dogs can count themselves very lucky. From around 8pm at night, Garry and Phil have the run of the yard. Their nightly freedom is by and large announced with a yelping followed by some scuffling, then a quick few laps of the yard at a gallop accompanied by much barking. At this time of night, we are usually awake, and the sound of the dogs in the yard barking at nothing is a reassurance and puts on a good show to anyone passer by who might be entertaining ideas of visiting unannounced.

The problems start around 1 am. At this hour, for reasons unknown, what can only be described as a doggie hue and cry rings out across the city. As to its origins, who knows? Perhaps a far off dog was putting in valiant service seeing off intruders. On hearing this, a neighbourhood bitch started to egg him on, then maybe another dog piped up so as to be seen to be taking part, etc, etc, so on and so forth, until via a kind of canine Chinese whispers, the commotion falls upon our yard wherein Gary and Phil go apeshit, announcing the imminent approach of armageddon to all within our section of town.

By about 1.15am, Gary and Phil’s reverie fizzles out to an embarrassed silence as nothing untoward happens at which point they tend to settle down for a nap.

About 4 am, the above cycle is repeated.

At 6am, they are rounded up to be put back in their kennel and it is here that they thoroughly out do themselves in noise making and fairly explode into a resigned and sullen silence some 5 minutes later.

As you can probably judge, I have had many an hour lying awake composing this post. I’ll leave the matter at that, save to say I’m getting less sleep now than when Tommy was born!